Tout menace: A bane of all RTOs

Hameed Ashraf | NT

Touts infest every regional transport office and no files move unless their palms are greased. Approaching babus for any task like getting a learner’s licence or renewal of driving licence, without the blessings of touts, will put you on a Kafkaesque wild goose chase. This graft culture is so deeply entrenched and institutionalised that even hightech interventions such as computerisation and smart cards have failed to make any dent. For the users it is a no-win situation, Hameed Ashraf reports.

Generally, people say that to obtain a driving licence, one needs good eyesight and a disease-free body, but try approaching the Regional Transport Office (RTO) offices in Bengaluru without an agent, it will warrant an additional virtue - patience.

Just imagine visiting an RTO – pictures of long queues and hot-headed staff comes to your mind. Getting things done at these offices is a major challenge for a common man. Many frustrated tech-savvy applicants vent their anger by sharing their experiences and behaviour of the RTO officials on social media, or by rating the RTO offices online.

Since the full-fledged launch of Sarathi web portal (which is a part of the panIndia Pari Vahan software) in 2018, it was said that getting a Learner’s Licence (LL) or renewal of Driving Licence (DL) and other formalities will be easy including online fee payments. But the applicants who visit the transport offices to clear their doubts regarding the licence, return with serious anger management issues.

Ajit Kumar, who visited Rajajinagar RTO said, “The information desk seems missing here. Nobody provides information in one shot. People have to run from one counter to another to get an answer to their queries,” he said.

Transport Commissioner N. Shivakumar was, however, unavailable for the comments. An official from RTO had a different explanation, “There are various factors leading to this. There is so much pressure from the top management that a common man has to bear the brunt,” he said.

People, who decide not to seek assistance from any agents, login to RTO’s website SARATHI. The MoRTH (Ministry of Road Transport & Highways) had entrusted several standards to National Informatics Centre such as ‘Smart Card Operating System for Transport Applications’ (SCOSTA) by deploying SARATHI to facilitate the issue of driving licences and compile relevant data in the states and national registers.

To some extent this has made the system adhere to all the mandates of the Central Motor Vehicle Act, 1988. The use of Smart Cards also ensured that the stored data was protected against unauthorized access and modifications. Following this, the Driving Licences became readable from state to state.

Technical glitches
No doubt that the SARATHI portal has simplified the procedures making it easy to record the details of the applicant, upload documents and photographs, book a slot for a visit to the concerned RTO and pay the requisite fee, from the comfort of home.

However, the problem is when the portal constantly rejects one or the other uploads declaring it incorrect. Sometimes there is a problem at the payment gateway where the system loops and does not accept online payments.

“Procedure is not as simple as it looks. There are no proper instructions at some level,” Tilak Raj, who collected his DL from Yeshwantpur RTO office, said. “Even after uploading identity and address proofs when I clicked the submit button, the form failed to submit without showing any instruction,” he said.

Following this, visiting the RTO office, standing in a monstrous queue to submit a copy of all the documents that have been already uploaded so that the officials verify it once more, becomes unavoidable. After submitting and verifying the documents, the applicants will have to shift to another long queue for the payments and further there is yet another queue for a photograph.

Finally, the applicant has to leave behind a self-addressed envelope so that the new DL reaches them by post. After a month or two, if the DL fails to reach the applicant, they will have to again navigate through the queues.

Touts’ version
However, agents claim that with major processes switched to online, their roles have diminished. A tout who has been in this business for a decade told News Trail on condition of anonymity, “Another reason for the decline in business is competition.”

The touts claim that they can help the applicants pass the computer test as well as the driving test “as many insiders are hand in glove with them”.